On any given day, you will likely find Casey Frese teaching English at Vista Ridge High School in Colorado Springs and Kira Weiland serving as Assistant Principal and middle school religion teacher at St. Thomas More Catholic School in Centennial.
But in late November, these two teachers joined 10 other teachers from Colorado and around the U.S. to walk in the steps of Polish Jews who were murdered in the “Holocaust by bullets.”
2024 participants in Trawniki, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland, November 28, 2024. Todd Hennessy is in the foreground, Kira Weiland stands behind him to the right with her hand on his shoulder, and Casey Frese is at the very back. ©2024 ELFS
The trip was coordinated by Yahad Colorado, the Colorado affiliate of Yahad-In Unum, a French organization that locates and investigates the sites of mass graves of Jewish victims of Nazi mobile killing units in former Soviet territories and Poland. Founded more than 20 years ago by Father Patrick Desbois, Yahad-In Unum has recorded testimony from more than 8,000 eyewitnesses to these mass killings.
“By taking witness testimonies, Yahad-In Unum is creating a historical record of the hidden Holocaust—the deaths that did not take place in concentration camps,” says Todd Hennessy, a Yahad In-Unum educational consultant, longtime Holocaust educator in Colorado, and co-leader of the teachers’ trip to Poland along with Yahad-In Unum’s Ewa Schaller and Renata Masna. “Of the six million who died in the Holocaust, nearly 2 million died in the Holocaust by bullets.”
Alina, born in 1932 in Pełczyn. Alina sketches a map for a Yahad Investigator/Educator. The group would later go to the mass grave that Alina placed on the map. She also described a second mass grave near the first that has not been completely confirmed yet. Taken in her home on November 28 in Pełczyn. ©Todd Hennessy/Yahad-In Unum
Casey Frese and Kira Weiland returned home after the Educational Leadership Program feeling both personally and professionally transformed.
“It was the most unbelievable experience of my life—like nothing I have ever done before,” says Weiland. “We went to places where people felt fear, horror, and humiliation and walked where they spent their last moments on earth. It was very humbling.”
“I had studied the Holocaust but learning about the Holocaust by bullets was brand new to me,” Frese adds. “It was a piece of history I missed, so this trip opened a whole new world to me. Now, I am teaching about it to students who also are discovering this history.”
The story of Yahad Colorado
Through Yahad Colorado, Ann Geldzahler and Todd Hennessy lead the efforts of Yahad-In Unum in Colorado. Hennessy, who also serves as the Director of Colorado Holocaust Educators, has been a Holocaust educator since the mid-1990s when he was a middle and high school teacher.
As long as 30 years ago, he remembers learning about ongoing conversations in Colorado to strengthen the standards for Holocaust and genocide education. That goal was finally reached in 2021 after tireless advocacy by JEWISHcolorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council when Gov. Jared Polis signed the Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Public Schools bill.
Stanislaw, born in 1932. Stanislaw was a witness to another shooting aktion in his hometown of Stanisławów, 9 km (5.5 miles) NE of Józefów. Taken in his home on November 26 in Józefów. ©Todd Hennessy/Yahad-In Unum
In the summer of 2015, Hennessy traveled to Poland with Dr. Mark Thorsen from Ponderosa High School on a faculty fellowship to study at the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim. There, they visited a site of mass killings outside Tarnow, just east of Krakow. Hennessy was aware of the work being done by Father Desbois through Yahad In-Unum and casually commented that it would be interesting to contact him.
That offhand remark took on a life of its own when Hennessy returned home and, collaborating with a group of Coloradans interested in Holocaust and genocide history, brought Father Desbois to Colorado to speak at History Colorado in spring of 2016.
At the behest of the Colorado Holocaust Educators, Father Desbois returned to Denver in November 2017 with Yahad-In Unum Educators to teach teachers how to teach the Holocaust by Bullets in three professional development trainings that drew teachers from Colorado and beyond.
Participants in Stanislaw’s kitchen during his interview/testimony. ©Todd Hennessy/Yahad-In Unum
“That was the first Yahad-In Unum professional development for teachers in the United States,” Hennessy says. “At that point, we were approached by Yahad In-Unum to form Yahad Colorado. Every year since 2017, there have been professional development courses for educators in Colorado, both in person and online.
In December 2023, a local sponsor approached Schaller and Hennessy to ask what the next logical step might be for teachers interested in diving deeper into this aspect of Holocaust history.
“We should take teachers to Poland to go to actual locations where the Holocaust by bullets took place,” they told the sponsor. “And, if possible, they should meet and hear the testimonies of witnesses.”
Lessons learned in Poland return to Colorado
Less than one year later and with the support of the generous sponsor who, Hennessy says, “truly understands the importance of this work,” a dozen teachers left for Poland over Thanksgiving break. The teachers spent a week immersed in learning about pre-Holocaust Jewish life in Poland, traveling to locations of mass killings, meeting with six local subject matter experts, and hearing recollections from four eyewitnesses who described deaths at the hand of the Nazis.
Participants with Stanislaw. ©Ewa Schaller/Yahad-In Unum
“We had high expectations for the trip knowing what was possible,” Hennessy says. “We exceeded those expectations.”
For Kira Weiland, the trip provided a culminating experience for seven years of study. She was in the first Yahad Colorado professional development for teachers in 2017 and she has continued to pursue multiple professional development opportunities to study the Holocaust, including a summer program at Yad Vashem.
Weiland has brought what she has learned back to her classroom where she weaves lessons on how antisemitism is perpetuated throughout her history and religion curricula on the Holocaust.
In Lublin, she saw a picture of Henio Zytomirski who was murdered at Majdanek concentration camp when he was nine years old. His life story has become a part of the general curriculum in Poland’s education system through the “Letters to Henio” project.
“All throughout Poland, children write letters to Henio at his last known address,” Weiland says. “I want my students in Centennial, Colorado, to write letters to him so they can see that the Holocaust is not just about numbers. It’s about the stories of individuals who lives were cut short.”
For Weiland, the trip also provided hope.
One of several Mass graves in the forest near Józefów ©Casey Frese
“We were standing in these beautiful forests where there had been mass killings, and we could feel how the potential of all these people is gone forever because someone chose to kill them,” she says. “But some survived and went on to have children and grandchildren. I am in awe of their resilience.”
Casey Frese learned about Yahad Colorado about a year ago. After one professional development course, he was eager to take more courses and travel to Poland where he heard personal testimonies of witnesses.
“We could watch the people from Yahad-In Unum ask questions and hear the responses,” he says. “One woman told us about a family member who was not Jewish but was hired to pick up trash at Majdanek. He felt compassion for the Jewish prisoners and was caught smuggling bread into the camp. When his pregnant wife went to the camp to beg for his release, they executed him.”
Participants in Alina’s living room during her interview/testimony. ©Ewa Schaller/Yahad-In Unum
Frese returned to his classroom and the elective he teaches in “Holocaust and Genocide Literature” with a new presentation based on the trip.
“The students said to me, ‘You are not Jewish, and you are not a history teacher, so why do you teach this class?’” Frese says. “To me, the issues surrounding genocide and the Holocaust are so relevant these days. In class, we talk about being a bystander who does nothing. We talk about how unbelievably difficult it may be to speak up against something that is not right. We talk about how little things matter. Mass killings start somewhere. That’s why I want to teach this material and that’s why it has impact.”
When the teachers returned to Colorado, they will be continuing the Educational Leadership Program by assessing classroom resources, developing curriculum, and promoting professional development for teachers in Colorado.
Anyone interested in Yahad Colorado or their Holocaust by bullets professional development opportunities for teachers can contact Ann Geldzahler or Todd Hennessy at cohoed.info@gmail.com.